Turtles, Perl Monks, and Fidonet

Susan and I spent the afternoon at Fair Park the other day and shot a lot of photos of turtles. Susan got creative and scanned one of the pictures and wrote a short essay about turtles.

Someone on Advogato mentioned a new Perl site called Perl Monks. They have a much more elaborate trust/skill metric system than Advogato. I’m an Initiate (everyone starts out at this level and gains points through peer recognition over time). There are ten levels with amusing titles like acolyte, friar, pontiff, and eventually saint.

I got several replies from other old fidonet folks after my last news item, so there do appear to be others out there who remember the good ol’ days.

I ran across an interesting news story on Yahoo. Seems some French scientists have successfully used gene therapy to restore normal functioning of the immune system in two boys suffering from SCID (the disorder forces them to live in a sealed environment because they have no resistance to infection). The doctors made the gene modification by extracting bone marrow, inserting the missing genes, and then replacing the bone marrow in the body. Pretty cool.